Switching from Backend SDE to SRE at Booking Holdings

Hi everyone,

I’m a backend engineer with ~5 years of experience (Java/Spring Boot, microservices, AWS). Currently working at a mid-tier product company in India, earning ~30 LPA.

I’ve received an offer from Booking Holdings for an SRE-2 role. The comp is strong (~45L base + 15% bonus + $20k stocks).

The role is described as 50% software engineering and 50% infrastructure/reliability, including:

• Automation in Python/Go
• RDS and large-scale database reliability
• Kubernetes / platform work
• On-call rotation
• Scaling + performance engineering

Long-term goal: SDE-3 / Staff Engineer in development (distributed systems/backend).

I’m trying to evaluate this strategically.

On one hand:

• Strong brand
• Massive scale exposure
• High compensation jump
• Reliability + infra depth could strengthen system design credibility

On the other:

• Title shift from SDE → SRE
• Risk of drifting away from product/backend track
• On-call / operational load
• Slightly harder to market as pure backend later?

For context, I also have a Senior Software Engineer offer from another product based company (~37 LPA), which is pure development but lower comp.

My questions:

1. Has anyone moved from SDE → SRE and later back to pure development?
2. Does SRE at a large-scale company strengthen or dilute a future Staff SWE trajectory?
3. Is 2 years in high-scale reliability a strong differentiator for senior backend roles?
4. Am I overthinking the title vs. actual work?

Would really appreciate insights from folks who’ve been in similar transitions.

Thanks!